SAN JOSE, Calif. – March 17, 2010 – Helping customers accelerate business growth, Cisco today announced the release of Cisco® Borderless Access. This portion of the company’s Borderless Networks architecture comprises products and service innovations that enable seamless and highly secure wired-wireless communications, sophisticated business-wide energy management, and the optimized delivery of video applications. As part of this architecture, Cisco is introducing an entire new series of fixed-switching product lines – the Cisco Catalyst® 3560/3750-X Series and 2960-S Series – that provide a comprehensive suite of new professional services offerings, flexible entry-level pricing, and an enhanced limited lifetime warranty. In addition to its switching lines, Cisco announced new routing innovation in the areas of advanced security and performance.

Today’s announcement builds on the Cisco Borderless Networks vision introduced in October 2009 and the announcement of Cisco Secure Borderless Networks earlier this month. The Cisco Borderless Networks architecture, which defines the attributes necessary for supporting businesses that are increasingly distributed and mobile, is designed to enable businesses to connect anyone to anything, anywhere, and anytime – in a highly secure, reliable and seamless environment. Cisco delivers on this architecture through video, energy management and highly secure networking services that are embedded across its routing, switching, wireless and security platforms to form a comprehensive borderless networking solution.

Network Services Highlights:

EnergyWise –Cisco EnergyWise harnesses network intelligence to help customers proactively control energy consumption and lower operating costs and carbon footprint. Cisco today announced the next release of this award-winning technology, featuring Cisco EnergyWise Orchestrator, which extends power management to PCs and laptops in addition to Power over Ethernet (PoE) devices. Today Cisco also released the EnergyWise SDK, available through the Cisco Developer Network, which enables third-party developers to implement EnergyWise support in their products.

Cisco TrustSec™ –Cisco TrustSec is a next-generation security solution allowing customers to deploy security policies across all access technologies, whether those are wired, wireless or virtual private networks. It combines identity and policy to help protect both customer and employee transactions anywhere on the network and to help ensure that users are authenticated and given access to network services based on identity. Cisco announced today that Cisco TrustSec is now available on the Catalyst 3560/3750 product portfolio. In addition, the new Catalyst 3560/3750-X Series features the industry’s first standards-based 802.1a/e (MACsec) implementations, which provide protection of sensitive data from eavesdropping and theft through advanced encryption between the switch and the client.

Medianet – Medianet solutions enable businesses to take advantage of video applications to transform workforce interactions. Medianet technology enables the detection and optimization of video and video endpoints, as well as the allocation and prioritization of network resources so that video can be delivered from one type of device, such as a Cisco TelePresence™ unit, to another type, such as a laptop or mobile phone. Medianet 1.0 is now supported on the new Catalyst fixed switches and Cisco ISR G2 routers.

New Fixed-Switching Product Highlights:

Cisco Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X: The flagship of the Cisco fixed-switching portfolio, these enterprise-class stackable and standalone switches deliver high-performance switching with 10 gigabit Ethernet, full PoE+ on all ports and a flexible smart uplink module. In addition to StackWise® Plus, which provides high availability to the data path, Cisco today introduced Cisco StackPower™, an industry-first, power-interconnect technology that brings unprecedented power resiliency to a stack of Catalyst 3750-X Series switches. With Cisco StackPower, the power supplies in a stack of up to four switches can be shared as a common resource among all the switches. In the event of power supply failures, power is maintained for business-critical applications while shedding power for lower-priority devices as defined by the user. A single 1100-watt power supply can provide power to four switches and the mission-critical end points attached to them, helping to ensure business continuity. The Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X Series switches also ship with Cisco Smart Operations a set of tools and capabilities allowing for zero-touch deployment and installation in a borderless network.

Cisco Catalyst 2960-S. With the introduction of the Cisco Catalyst 2960-S Series Switch, Cisco delivers more access options and performance than ever before, with solutions packaged and priced to meet diverse customer scalability, resilience, and security needs. The Catalyst 2960-S delivers FlexStack stacking for increased availability and performance, 10GE uplinks, full PoE on every port plus support for PoE+, and the full Cisco EnergyWise capabilities. Additionally, the 2960-S platform has been highly optimized, resulting in as much as 50 percent savings in power. This full-featured switch brings mainstream capabilities for today’s businesses at a highly attractive price point.

New Routing Product Highlights:

Cisco Integrated Services Router G2 3900 E-Series: Introduced in October 2009, the Cisco ISR G2 is the next-generation portfolio of enterprise routers designed to better enable rich-media applications, service virtualization and energy efficiency, all with industry-leading security. Today, Cisco announced it has tripled the performance of the ISR G2 router line and extended the delivery of high-performance video applications, service integration and cost savings to remote businesses.

Cisco ASR 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers Software Release 6: Building on the award-winning capabilities of the quantum-flow ASIC, the latest release for the ASR-1000 family of routers delivers new security, unified communications, and management capabilities to enable customers to deliver borderless services over the WAN. Additionally, the ASR 1000 Series now includes the Smart Call Home feature, which increases platform reliability.

Additional Information:

Cisco enhanced limited lifetime hardware warranty. The Cisco Catalyst 2960-S, 3560-X and 3750-X Series switches come with a new warranty which provides next-business-day hardware replacement where available and 90 days of Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) support. Additional information can be found at www.cisco.com/go/warranty.

Dramatic power savings. Select new Cisco switching platforms consume as much as 50 percent less power than previous generations, resulting in gigabit performance that consumes less power than older 100-megabit technology.

Ease of operations through resiliency and flexibility. Operational excellence means nonstop business. From self-preserving resiliency to flexibility with Cisco StackPower and StackWise technologies, to in-service software upgrades, Cisco enables higher availability and business productivity by reducing network downtime while providing scalability when needed.

Channel partner acceleration. Cisco has tailored channel partner initiatives to help partners grow their businesses with architecture-led selling. The new, enhanced network services – Cisco Trustsec, medianet solutions, and Cisco EnergyWise - and the platforms that deliver them, enable Cisco channel partners to be more competitive and offer innovations unmatched by other vendors. These new solutions are being integrated into Cisco’s industry-leading partner incentive programs.

New Professional Services. Cisco today launched a suite of services to help customers realize the full value of the Borderless Networks Architecture. Among those services announced today are Cisco Network Architecture Discovery; Assessment; and Planning and Design Services which help customers speed architectural planning and design. Also announced are Cisco TrustSec Readiness and Deployment Service, which helps customers adapt a Cisco TrustSec solution to their networks for greater security; Cisco Services for Energy Management, which help reduce energy costs and enable customers to get the most from the Cisco EnergyWise architecture; and Cisco Medianet Readiness Service, which prepares the network environment to support the successful implementation of rich-media applications. Also announced today are enhanced security and wireless LAN capabilities in the Cisco Network Optimization Service.

Webcast. Cisco will host live events to support this announcement in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific with featured speakers including John Chambers, CEO and chief executive officer. To attend via webcast, register at http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/netsys/g2/index.html.

Supporting Quotes:

Rob Soderbery, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Ethernet Switching Technology Group: “Communications, collaboration and entertainment are fast becoming digitized and connected, and this trend is not only loading networks but also changing them. Cisco’s core networking business, including the Catalyst 2000 and 3000 families, is at the heart of this change. Switching and routing are the foundation for innovation that will bring the next generation of the Internet to life. Cisco’s strategy is to deliver greater value within its core networking offerings and, in turn, provide customers with a more cohesive, architecturally sound IT infrastructure to support the new Internet.”

Danny Bowman, president of Integrated Solutions Group—Sprint: “Sprint shares Cisco’s vision of the borderless network architecture and is collaborating with Cisco to offer integrated wireless and wireline communications solutions to businesses and government agencies. Sprint’s converged Wireless WAN and wireline Internet Protocol solutions powered by a Cisco IP core network enable ubiquitous access to applications from anywhere, anytime and the ability to quickly respond to changing business needs.”

Henri Huy, head of data center studies, EDF Group (a leading electricity producer in Europe): “We turned to Cisco because we needed a trusted partner who would be with us for the long-term and would help us build the highly secure, flexible infrastructure to support our business as needs change. The new Catalyst 3750-X switches will be a key part of that new infrastructure to help us support video and conserve energy well into the future.”

Adrian Ross, chief information officer, Zurich Airport: “Zurich Airport has consistently been recognized as one of the top airports in Europe, and our end-to-end Cisco network is one of the keys to that success. Partnering with Cisco has allowed us to achieve business innovations including wireless access for passengers, partners and aircraft maintenance. Our product testing confirmed that the new Catalyst 2960-S switches will reduce power consumption by 50 percent, which will help lower our capital and operating expenses while allowing us to deliver network services that will enable us to reach new heights in customer service. That’s why we were among the first to order the new gear.”

Tom Ogg, director of information technology, Oakwood Healthcare: “One million people in 35 communities depend upon Oakwood Healthcare, so there’s a lot riding on our network. As our doctors keep pushing the envelope to deliver state-of-the-art care, my infrastructure team will keep pushing the envelope on network reliability and performance. We value our relationship with Cisco, we’re impressed by Cisco’s innovations in the new Catalyst 3750-X switches, and we look to Cisco to continue to innovate as we build out our medical-grade network.”

Dave Kaercher, senior vice president—U.S. Bank Network Services: “As part of our network lifecycle plans, we are refreshing our entire branch network using the Cisco ISR G2 Series Routers. The ISR G2 also offers U.S. Bank the possibility to deploy security and video as an integrated solution. Through Cisco we have a single, reliable vendor that can facilitate maintenance, training and product support not just during implementation but throughout the product lifespan.”

Links/URLs

Video on Demand: Cisco Services’ Sherri Liebo discusses a comprehensive suite of new professional service offerings which can help customers realize the full value of the Borderless Network architecture.

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